No Time To Die

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on November 12, 2021, and ABC Radio Central Victoria on November 15.

(M) ★★★★★

Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga.

Cast: Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Rami Malek, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Wright, Christoph Waltz, Billy Magnussen, Ana de Armas, David Dencik, Rory Kinnear, Dali Benssalah, Lisa-Dorah Sonnet.

"No time to die, but always time for a drink, am I right?"

I've always graded films on how well they meet their aspirations. Not every film is trying to be Citizen Kane or Lawrence Of Arabia, so the only accurate benchmark to measure a film against is how successfully it achieves what it is trying to achieve.

No Time To Die is trying to do a lot of things. It's trying to wrap up the Daniel Craig era of Bond, while also give Craig a fitting farewell that matches his brilliant entry to the franchise (Casino Royale, which is the best Bond film for my money). It's also trying to push the series into places its never been and continue its modernisation, while also maintaining the essential 007-ness of it all. And it wants to be a damned good Bond film.

No Time To Die is all those things. It achieves every goal, and does so with heart, grit, guts and the occasional wry smile. It's a continuation of the changes that have been evident in the series with every passing decade, but it's also exceedingly worthy of carrying the 007 licence. In short, this will go down as one of the best Bond films of all time.

It certainly carries one of the most Bond-worthy plots - the villainous Lyutsifer Safin (Malek) has taken control of a diabolical superweapon with the capacity to selectively wipe out anyone he wants, one family at a time. Naturally, it's up to Bond to stop him.

What's impressive about No Time To Die is the way it weaves this typical storyline among the threads of the connections Craig's Bond has made along the way. It ups the stakes like no 007 movie before - not just in a "I'm trying to take over the world!" megalomaniacal way, but in a personal way for Bond as well. It shows Bond in a new light, making him simultaneously stronger and more vulnerable than ever before.

Most of this comes down to the script, written by series regulars Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, along with director Fukunaga, and polished by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. But a lot of credit also has to go to Craig, who delivers the highs and lows beautifully. His light touch with humour along with his physicality and ruggedness have made him a great Bond, but its been his dramatic chops and emotional range that have set him apart, never more so than here. 

Fukunaga's cinematography is outstanding, the set pieces are brilliant, and the ending is to die for. The cast regulars such as Whishaw, Harris, Fiennes and Wright are great, and the returnees Seydoux and Waltz are also excellent, but its de Armas and Lynch that threaten to walk away with the movie, especially de Armas, who lights up a wonderful sequence set in Cuba. 

Series custodians Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli have successful closed one Bond chapter and provided a blank slate for whoever is chosen to pick up the martini glass next. But whoever does so has some huge shoes to fill. No previous Bond has ever gone out on a high like this.

Eternals (no spoilers review)

This is a version of a review airing on ABC Radio Ballarat and South West Victoria on November 12, 2021.

(M) ★★★

Director: Chloé Zhao.

Cast: Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Angelina Jolie, Brian Tyree Henry, Lauren Ridloff, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Salma Hayek, Harish Patel, Kit Harington, Bill Skarsgård, David Kaye.

"How long do we have to pose like this?"

In the wake of its box office-breaking, era-ending Endgame, Marvel's subsequent fare has paled in comparison. 

That's not to say the post-Endgame films have been bad. Au contraire. Spider-Man: No Way Home, Black Widow and Shang Chi & The Legend Of The Ten Rings have all been great fun, with some strong highlights. But next to Endgame, they're small cheese.

Similarly, Eternals lives in the shadow of the great MCU films that have come before, and superhero fatigue is very real for many. Even the two-year-long COVID-enforced gap in releases hasn't eased this.

All of this is no fault of Zhao and her superb cast. Yes, Eternals has its flaws, but this film would have felt far more impressive five years ago. Now, it feels good without being great - an enjoyable but bloated push into Marvel's cosmic comics catalogue that lacks a truly fresh angle to make it stand out from the crowd beyond its very welcome representation.

For those who don't know their Celestials from their Deviants, the film deals with a team of superheroes - the Eternals - who are sent to Earth by the god-like Celestials to protect mankind from some weird beasties known as the Deviants.

With their job seemingly completed, the Eternals hang out on Earth for a few extra centuries, waiting for their next mission. But the Deviants have returned, and are far more powerful than our timeless heroes remember.

There are a lot of firsts for Marvel in this film. Across its wonderfully diverse cast, there is a differently abled hero, a gay hero, and plenty of ethnicities that have never seen themselves reflected back like this. Representation is important. If you think otherwise, you're probably white or stupid or both.

Naturally, the problems with the film are nothing to do with this. They stem from the difficult task of explaining the convoluted backstory behind these characters and their overlords - it's far easier by comparison to say "I got bit by a radioactive spider". But the film struggles to explain its exposition and so overcompensates. There's an opening crawl, then we see what's explained in that opening crawl actually happening. Then, when big reveals are revealed, things get explained again.

This would be a deal-breaker for a film that doesn't look as good as this, or that doesn't have such excellent depth and heart, or such a fascinating array of characters so well portrayed. As much as Eternals crawls in places and struggles under the weight of its exposition, these lulls are surrounded by shining character moments and great fun.

The theme of family (insert Fast & Furious joke here) is minor compared to what Eternals is trying to say about humanity itself. Characters go back and forth about whether mankind is worth saving, about whether the few must die so the many can live - the kinds of ideas that have kept philosophers awake at night for millennia and are fun to explore in a superhero blockbuster.

With 10 Eternals in play, the film gets plenty of opportunities to kick around these ideas, but its biggest strength is that each character and their perspective feels fully fleshed out and distinctive, beyond their colourful costumes and varied power sets. There are no weak links in the cast, but Henry, Jolie, Madden and Nanjiani really shine.

Zhao handles the action scenes nicely, making good shot choices to ensure the combat doesn't get lost in hard-to-follow close-ups and edits, and generally the film looks amazing. She also lets the character moments breathe amid the global carnage.

Eternals is not the home-run many had hoped it would be, but nor is it the disaster many are claiming. It's a slightly over-stuffed ensemble piece that delivers a wonderful array of cool characters and some much needed diversity in the superhero genre.

Ranking the Fantastic Four films

The Fantastic Four are Marvel's first family - 60 years ago, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee created this super team and they became the foundations that the House of Ideas was built on.

Over the past six decades, the FF have been used to explore plenty of cosmic ideas, but at their core there has been several key themes, including family, discovery, the weight of greatness, and the cost that comes with trying to build a better tomorrow. With no secret identities to hide behind, the fascinating foursome have proven themselves to be incredibly human and very vulnerable over the years. This has helped them sell upwards of 150 million comics and made them among the most relatable characters in the Marvel canon.

Yet every time Marvel's first family is taken to the big screen, things have gone badly. An MCU-approved reboot is on the cards, but let's look back and laugh/cry/hurl at the mis-steps the FF have made over the years.

And here's a piece about all this that I wrote for the ABC.

1. Fantastic Four (2005) ★★★

Not as bad as you remember thanks to some spirited performances, strong casting, and a couple of cool sequences. Some of the special FX have aged as poorly as the overly sexualised nature of it all, but the general vibe is one of campy fun and half-decent reverence for the material. The characters are fairly comic-accurate (except for Dr Doom), and most of the tweaks work, broadly speaking. The prosthetics of The Thing are pretty great, and Michael Chiklis nails it as Ben Grimm, while Chris Evans has a field day as Johnny Storm. It's worth noting Jessica Alba and Ioan Gruffudd are individually okay but together they're terrible, while Julian McMahon gives it his best shot at an underwritten Dr Doom. As an origin story, it's not bad, and some naff moments aside, it had the potential to launch a strong franchise.

2. Fantastic Four: The Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2007) ★★

A scattergun sequel that centres on the Coming of Galactus storyline, but forgets to bring the necessary dread or gravitas. Many comicbook fans lamented were critical of Galactus being rewritten as a giant cloud instead of massive planet-eating dude, but that's not the real problem here. Gruffudd and Alba still have all the chemistry of two bricks, and it's particularly telling when Evans and Alba demonstrate more spark... and they're playing brother and sister. But it's the story that's the main issue. Dr Doom is resurrected with no explanation, and the film doesn't seem entirely sure what to do with him or Silver Surfer. Evans and Chiklis save the day, and there are some good laughs along the way, but the franchise feels tired, two films in.

3. Fantastic Four (2015) ★★

Read my full (and very generous) review here.

Once again, they nail the casting, but the script is a mess, perhaps because the studio was trying to save the film with re-shoots, edits, and no bloody idea. All origin, no story, the film goes nowhere and spends a long time doing it. On the plus side, Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell and Toby Kebbell give their all, and the film at least dares to be different, following the Ultimate Fantastic Four storyline and embracing a certain amount of darkness, most likely in an attempt to differentiate it from the MCU. More of a noble failure than most give it credit for, but it's also a total mess.

The Fantastic Four (1994) ★½

Feel sorry for Alex Hyde-White, the big screen’s best Reed Richards, stuck in a film that has the dubious honour of being so bad it was never released. The truth is far more complex than that, but this is definitely a sub-par B-movie that looks like it was made in 1984, not 1994. Made for the wrong reasons but with a couple of surprisingly good moments, it’s predominantly packed with bad choices, terrible scripting, and laughable performances. A wonderfully hammy Dr Doom makes this kinda fun, as does a too-good-for-this performance by Hyde-White, and a valiant effort from Rebecca Staab in a horribly underwritten role as Sue Storm. The effects are dire, but far worse films have been released, and it's definitely in the so bad-it's-good department.